Friday, December 21, 2007

Social Networking Websites

Using of FaceBook, MySpace and other Social Network Websites during Work Hours?

I was quite surprised to see the stats of a recently surveyed carried out by Microsoft showing that 4.17% of people stay connected throughout the working day to their favourite Social Networking Website. 42.50% of the people are joining the network without knowing all the members of that network. For example, People are joining London when they don't know all the members in London. Mind you, all members in London can get access to your profile if you haven't set any special privacy settings.

I was reading a post by Steve Lamb in regards to a recently surveyed and would like to share with my viewers.

What are the UK trends in the corporate use of Social Networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace?

Microsoft recently surveyed nearly four hundred IT Professionals to find out their approaches to Social Networking. You can view the full results here.

I think the findings are interesting as the results suggest that social networking sites are more popular with IT Pros than end users by a factor of nearly two to one.40% of IT Pros do not see any security concerns in using social networking sites and 46% of companies are not monitoring their use.

I AM concerned that 35% of respondents publish their address and date of birth on these sites.16% of respondents stated they have downloaded an application without checking it's safe - I would love to know what steps they took to verify the "safety" of a suspect application...

The whole idea of "downloading" an application in Facebook is quite different to the "traditional approach" as code is not actually downloaded to the client machine - it's simply enabled on the Facebook website/backend. Rogue applications DO pose a threat to the privacy of both those who install them AND their friends. They DO NOT pose a threat of compromising the security of the client machine as code is not installed there.

I would like to see all organisations providing guidance to their employees regarding the threat to privacy that thoughtless use of social networking sites can lead to. Only 17% of respondents state they have provided guidance to employees and fewer than 5% of the workforce actually say they have received advice.